Uber! It’s convenient, cheap, and slowly supplanting taxi drivers. It is also a total crapshoot. There’s no denying that it’s filling the niche left by taxi companies and their pretty sh*tty service. But let’s not pretend that Uber is very nice either. The company has been caught in a load of controversies, including topics like “not paying employees”, “hiring rapists” and “charging people more after a terrorist attack”.
Oh yeah, they did that.
Yeah, it’s all because of a thing called surge pricing. Uber has this algorithm that keeps an eye on supply and demand and ramps prices up depending on the time of day. It’s gotten them in trouble before when they were caught ramping prices up after massive catastrophes and terror attacks. Charging someone extra money when they’re trying to reach safety, or see if a loved one is okay, is a huge d*ck move.
Well the surge pricing has been caught out again! A young couple in Toronto were recently charged $18000 Canadian dollars (about $14000 USD or £10000 GBP) for a teeny weeny 5 mile ride. The journey shouldn’t have cost more than $10 but somehow the surge pricing decided that it was worth a lot more.
The couple were later furious to discover that Uber weren’t going to refund them. Why? Because they’re a bunch of asses. Only after the couple posted about their experiences online and got a load of press attention did Uber relent and give them their cash back.
"We have provided a full refund to this rider and apologized to him for this experience. We have safeguards in place to help prevent something like this from happening, and we are working to understand how this occurred,” Uber said in a statement.
Nice one Uber!
